I keep hearing about how Greeks carry around something called 'worry beads'. Are these the same thing as a prayer rope (Komvoskini/Tchotki)? If not the same thing, what are they used for?

Worry beads are just that. People use them to pass time while sitting at a cafe or with friends. They take the edge off. Similar to a cigarette or good cigar. One releases there anxieties with them. They have no religious purpose. A prayer rope is knotted 33 times with the symbol of the cross for every rounded knot and a Jesus prayer for each cross. Each knot looks like a ball and there are 33 of them as well. Monks often make them for there spiritual children. One typically carries a prayer rope from their spiritual father or mother. The prayers are for the person wearing the rope. (Short version)

Logged

Excellence of character, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it. Now it is a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect.

I see. Thank you Demetrios. Do people ever use their worry beads to say prayers with?

Doubt it, at least in Greece. However, many other cultures have worry beads of one kind or another. They are everywhere from the Mediterranean to Asia Minor to the Middle East to Asia. Maybe some of those other peoples use them for religious reasons as well.

Logged

But for I am a man not textueel I wol noght telle of textes neuer a deel. (Chaucer, The Manciple's Tale, 1.131)